Part 9 (2/2)

Subjected thus to analysis, there seems much to praise and very little to criticise in the tactical dispositions made by the admiral on this h most important, are not the only considerations; it is the part of the coe of any other circumstances that may make in his favor Until the forts were passed the character of the bottout no choice as to the direction of his attack There was but one road to take, and the only other question was the order in which to arrange his shi+ps But there were two conditions not entirely within his control, yet sure to occur in tieous to be overlooked He wanted a flood tide, which would help a crippled vessel past the works; and also a ind, which would blow the siving to the pilots, upon whounners of the shi+ps, the advantage of clearer sight The time of the tide, in most quarters a matter of simple calculation, is in the Gulf often affected by the wind The wind, on the other hand, in the su, and then works round to the ard; so that the chances were in favor of his obtaining his wishes

The dispositions taken by the Confederates towerebut a s tied to their places A seaport liable to attack is a battle-field, in utilizing whose natural features, so as to present the strongest tactical coainst entrance or subjection by an eneineer is shown; but, unlike battle-fields in general, much time and study is allowed to develop his plans In the case of Mobile Bay, the narrow and direct character of the approach by the main shi+p channel left little opportunity for skill to display itself To place at the end of Mobile Point the heaviest fort, enfilading the channel, and to confine the latter to the narrowest bed, co the assailant into the most unfavorable route, were measures too obvious to escape the e from this approach of the enemy, the little naval force was advanced froles across the channel just within the torpedo line

There, without being inco it, they secured a clear sweep for their guns, raking their opponents; who, being for the time unable to deviate froradually retiring, the Confederate gunboats could retain this superiority during the advance of their foes, until the latter reached the wide hole within, where there was room to manoeuvre This position and the subsequent course of action described co the engagement It ell devised, and round possible to so inferior a force The Tennessee took position with them, but her after action was different

As the day of the last and, with the exception of the Essex fight of his boyhood, the most desperate battle of his life drew near, a certain soleht almost say depression--is perceptible in the home letters of the admiral Had the action proved fatal to him it could scarcely have failed to attract the attention which is similarly arrested by the chastened tone of Nelson's life and writing ih there is certainly none of that outspoken foreboding which ut's written words are in such apparent contrast to the usual buoyant, confident temper of the man, that they would readily have been construed into one of those presentiments hich military annals abound ”With such a mother,” he writes to his son a week before the battle, ”you could not fail to have proper sentiion and virtue I feel that I have done my duty by you both, as far as the weakness of my nature would allow I have been devoted to you both, and when it pleases God to take me hence I shall feel that I have done ed any one, and have tried to do as o, and may God bless and preserve you both!” The day before the action he wrote the following letter to his wife, which, as his son remarks in his Life of the admiral, shows that he appreciated the desperate work before hiust 4, 1864_

”MY DEAREST WIFE: I write and leave this letter for you I a, if God is my leader, as I hope he is, and in him I place my trust If he thinks it is the proper place for me to die, I as My great mortification is that one in yesterday The ar, and the Tecumseh has not yet arrived fro, andshould happen to s also rest upon your dear mother, and all your sisters and their children

”Your devoted and affectionate husband, who never for one ot his love, duty, or fidelity to you, his devoted and best of wives,

”D G FARRAGUT”

Aattache, no wife could desire It was an attachment also not merely professed in words, but evidenced by the whole course of his life and conduct Infidelity or neglect of a as, in truth, in the estiut, one of theout always his bitterest condelimpse is at this sa members of his father's family, who still remained in or near New Orleans, and from whom by the conditions of his profession he had been separated since his childhood ”My dear sister,” he writes, ”has sent ave me She said it was blessed by the archbishop, who said I was good to the priests I only tell you this,” adds the admiral dryly, ”to show you that they did not succeed in i the bishop with the idea that I had robbed the church at Point Coupee” This is not the onlythis time, and it is evident that two years' occupation of New Orleans by the Union forces had done much to mollify public sentiment; for immediately after the surrender he had written ho my relatives, and yet not one has dared to say 'I am happy to see you'”

On the 8th of July General Canby, accoe of the land operations against the Mobile forts, had called upon the adements

Soh to invest both Gaines and Morgan at the saestion it was then decided to land first upon Dauphin Island, he undertaking to send a gunboat to cover the ust, and as the admiral then had reason to expect the last of his monitors by the 4th, that day was fixed for the attack and landing Granger was up to ti of the 3d; but the Tecumseh had not arrived from Pensacola

The other three had been on hand since the 1st, anchored under the shelter of Sand Island, three reat raether with the Rich for the fight ”I regret to have detained you, admiral,” said Craven, the commander of the monitor, ”but had it not been for Captain Jenkins (of the Richmond), God knohen I should have been here When your order came I had not received an ounce of coal” In his report of the battle, Farragut wary of Jenkins, to which he owed the seasonable arrival of this important re-enforcement ”He takes,” he said, ”as much interest in the fleet now as for officer of the second division of my squadron, and as such has shown ability and themy duty did I not call the attention of the Department to an officer who has performed all his various duties with so ed with failure to notice adequately the services of those under hi words, which are not by any means unparalleled in his dispatches, show that he could praise cordially when he saw fitting occasion

The night of August 4th was quiet, the sea s the surface of the water At sundown it had been raining hard, but towardhot and cal up from the southwest The admiral was not well, and slept restlessly About three in thehe called his servant and sent hi that it was froo in in the ot under way and went alongside those to which they were to be lashed When daybreak was reported Farragut was already at breakfast with the captain of the Hartford, Percival Drayton, and the fleet-surgeon, Dr James C Palmer, who had left his usual post at the hospital in Pensacola to superintend the care of those wounded in the approaching battle It was then about half-past five; the couples were all for his tea, said quietly, ”Well, Drayton, we nal was ed by the vessels, which had all been awaiting it, and the sea their assigned positions in the colu which the flag-shi+p crossed the bar, at ten minutes past six At half-past six the column of wooden vessels was for down fro which some little further delay was caused At this ti, not only at the peak where it commonly flies, but at every mast-head as well

It had been the intention of the admiral to lead the column of wooden vessels with his own shi+p; but at the earnest request of reater risk consequent upon having its commander in so exposed a position, he reluctantly consented to waive his purpose, and the Brooklyn was appointed to this post of honor To this selection contributed also the fact that the Brooklyn had e of which has been explained, and also an arrange up torpedoes

Bitterly afterward did Farragut regret his yielding on this occasion ”I believe this to be an error,” he wrote in his official report of the battle; ”for, apart from the fact that exposure is one of the penalties of rank in the navy, it will _always_ be the ai-shi+p, and, as will appear in the sequel, such attempt was very persistently made” ”The fact is,” he said in one of his letters home, ”had I been the obstinate man you sometimes think me, I would have led in the fleet and saved the Tecu between that important vessel and the buoy which marked the torpedo line, he would have prevented the error which caused her loss

So his papers contain the sa the Brooklyn to go ahead was a great error It lost not only the Tecu us under the fire of the forts for thirty minutes; whereas, had I led, as I intended to do, I would have gone inside the buoys, and all would have followedsecured on her port or off side the side-wheel gunboat Metacomet, Lieutenant-Commander Ja their stations, the Tecumseh, which led their column, fired two shots at the fort At fivefully foran opened fire upon the Brooklyn, which at once replied with her bow guns, followed very soon by those of the fighting colu between them, the monitors, and the fort In order to see more clearly, and at the same time to have ioverning the ut had taken his position in the porton the wheel-house of the Metacomet, and also the pilot, who, as at Port Hudson, had been stationed aloft, on this occasion in the maintop, so as to see well over the sut went up step by step until he was close under thetouch with Jouett, he was very near the pilot, had the whole scene of battle spread out under his eyes, and at the saainst the futtock shrouds, was able to use his spy-glassalarht be thrown to the deck, directed a sea, which the admiral, after a moment's remonstrance, permitted By such a siht to and secured in a position which he, like any other coht merely in order better to see the operations he had to direct; but popular fancy was caught by the circumstance, and to his a was invested with a significance equivalent to that of colors nailed to the ,” he wrote home ”Leslie has me lashed up to the mast like a culprit, and says, 'It is the way officers will hereafter go into battle, etc' You understand, I was only standing in the rigging with a rope, that dear boy Watson had brought me up,” (this was later in the action, when the ad that if I would stand there I had better secure ; and I thanked him for his consideration, and took a turn around and over the shrouds and aroundrather thickly”

Shortly after the , the enean and took their position enfilading the channel Twenty h the advance of the coluan to bear upon the fort; and as these heavy batteries vomited their iron rain the fire of the defense visibly slackened Ahter, in which the petty Confederate flotilla, thanks to its position of vantage, was playing a deadly part quite out of proportion to its actual strength, the Tecumseh alone was silent After the first two shots fired by her, which were rather the signal of warning than the opening of the battle, she had loaded her two guns with steel shot, backed by the heaviest charge of powder allowed, and, thus prepared, reserved her fire for the Tennessee alone ”I believe,” wrote Farragut in a private letter, ”that the Tecurappled with and captured the Tennessee Craven's heart was bent upon it”

The two coluether in pairs, were now approaching the line of torpedoes and the narrow entrance through which lay the path of safety; and the broadsides of the heavy sloops which led--the Brooklyn, the Hartford, the Richmond--supported by the less nuuns of the turreted ironclads, overbore the fire of the works All promised fairly, provided the leaders of the two coluned them But almost at the same moment doubt seized the the monitor column, and then about three hundred yards in advance of the Brooklyn, drew up to the buoy, to the eastward of which he had been directed to go, he saw it so nearly in line with the point beyond that he could not believe it possible to pass ”It is io inside that buoy,” he said to the pilot; ”I can not turn my shi+p” Just then the Tennessee moved a little ahead, to the ard; and Craven, under the double impulse of his doubt and of his fear lest the hostile ironclad should escape hiht for her, the Tecu side

Themonitors, would throw that column across the path of the wooden shi+ps if the latter endeavored to obey their orders to pass east of the buoy At the same moment there were seen from the Brooklyn, in the water ahead, certain objects which were taken to be buoys for torpedoes The shi+p was at once stopped and backed, co down upon the Hartford, her next astern, which also stopped, but did not reverse her engines The Richmond followed the Hartford'sflood tide, but with their heads still pointed in the right direction, toward the Brooklyn; the stern of the latter vessel, as she backed, co up into the wind so that her bows turned toward the fort Fortunately, the rear shi+ps were sonorant of the cause of the Brooklyn's action, saw his line of battle doubling up and threatened with an almost inextricable confusion, in the e, under a cross-fire frohtful perplexity succeeded the great disaster of the day

Craven, pursuing his course across the suspected line of danger, had reached within two hundred yards of the Tennessee, and the crews of both vessels aiting with tense nerves for the expected collision, when a torpedo exploded under the Tecumseh, then distant a little over five hundred yards frout saw her reel violently froo down head fore wildly in the air as she disappeared

It was the supreme moment of his life, in which the scales of his fortunes wavered in the balance All the long years of preparation, of faithful devotion to obscure duty awaiting the opportunity thatthe two brief years in which his flag had flown--all the glories of the river fights--on the one side; and on the other, threatening to overbear and wreck all, a danger he could not measure, but whose dire reality had been testified by the catastrophe just befallen under his own eyes Added to this was the complication in the order of battle ahead of him, produced by the double er allowed hiht, and lead his fleet in person through the narrohere, if at all, safety lay

The Brooklyn, when she began to back, was on the starboard bow of the flag-shi+p, distant one or two hundred yards, and falling off to starboard lay directly in the way athwart the channel The second monitor, Manhattan, of the same class as the Tecuhts, the Winnebago and Chickasaere drawing up abreast of the three shi+ps thus ether As they passed, the ad-shi+p was stirred to see Captain Stevens, of the Winnebago, pacing calmly from turret to turret of his unwieldy vessel, under the full fire of the fort; while of Perkins, in the Chickasaw, the youngest coe, an officer of high position in the flag-shi+p says, ”As he passed the Hartford he was on top of the turret, waving his hat and dancing about with delight and exciteallantly by, the position of these vessels, co-shi+p, forbade the latter's turning in that direction unless at the risk of adding to a confusion already sufficiently perilous A signal was o ahead; but that vessel gave no sign ofprobably perplexed between his orders to pass east of the buoy and the difficulty of doing so, owing to the position into which his shi+p had now fallen and the situation of the monitors But to remain thus motionless and undecided, under the fire of the fort with the other shi+ps counners and to increase the confusion, was out of the question To advance or to recede seeerous Ahead lay the dreaded line of torpedoes; behind was the possibility of retreat, but beaten, baffled, and disastrous All depended upon the prompt decision of the admiral If he failed himself, or if fortune failed hilooree of which could not be foreseen In later days, Farragut told that in the confusion of thesethat all his plans had been thwarted, he was at a loss whether to advance or retreat In this extremity the devout spirit that ruled his life, and so constantly appears in his correspondence, iuidance, and he offered up this prayer: ”O God, who created o on?” ”And it seemed,”

said the admiral, ”as if in answer a voice coallant te to ere quick to respond Personal danger could not deter him; and if it was necessary that soh the torpedo line by the sacrifice of herself, he was prepared by all his habits of thought to accept that duty for the vessel bearing his flag Describing the spirit in which he began an arduous enterprise, after once deciding that it should be undertaken, he said: ”I calculate thus: The chances are that I shall lose souns of the enemy, but with some of my fleet afloat I shall eventually be successful I can not lose all I will attack, regardless of consequences, and never turn back” To a mind thus disciplined and prepared, the unforeseen dilemma presented before the barriers of Mobile Bay caused but a passing perplexity Like the Puritan soldier who trusted in God and kept his powder dry, Farragut ed plans and the sudden decision thrust upon him with the calthened by a profound dependence upon the will of the Alo forward

The Hartford was now too near the Brooklyn to go clear by a si hard, therefore, the wheels of the Metaco her own screw ahead, her boere twisted short round, as in a like strait they had been pointed fair under the batteries of Port Hudson; then, going ahead fast, the two shi+ps passed close under the stern of the Brooklyn and dashed straight at the line of the buoys As they thus went by the vessel which till then had led, a warning cry came from her that there were torpedoes ahead ”damn the torpedoes!” shouted the adh purpose

”Four bells![X] Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!” The Hartford and her consort crossed the line about five hundred yards from Mobile Point, well to the ard of the buoy and of the spot where the Tecuone down As they passed between the buoys, the cases of the torpedoes were heard by ainst the copper of the bottom, and many of the primers snapped audibly, but no torpedo exploded The Hartford went safely through, the gates of Mobile Bay were forced, and as Farragut's flag cleared the obstructions his last and hardest battle was virtually won The Brooklyn got her head round, the Rich her by a sustained fire from her heavy broadside; and, after a delay which allowed the flag-shi+p to gain nearly a mile upon them, the other shi+ps in order followed the Hartford, ”believing,”